Question

I have created a populated dropdown list in HTML. When the two dropdowns have been selected, the form posts to ‘calculate.php’ where the php script echoes out the selected values from the dropdowns.

<form action="calculate.php" method='POST'>
<select name="Phones">
<option value="Lumia800">Nokia Lumia 800</option>
<option value="iPhone">Apple iPhone 4s</option>
<option value="GalaxyS2">Samsung Galaxy S2</option>
<option value="Bold9900">Blackberry Bold 9900</option>
<option value="SensationXE">HTC Sensation XE</option>
<option value="XperiaS">Sony Ericsson Xperia S</option>
</select>

<select name="Network">
<option value="Orange">Orange</option>
<option value="Vodafone">Vodafone</option>
<option value="O2">O2</option>
<option value="Three">Three</option>
</select>

<input type="submit" />
</form>

In this one example, ‘calculate.php’ echoes the selected dropdown values.

<?php 
$pref=$_POST['Phones'];
$pref1=$_POST['Network'];

$Orange="5";

if ($pref1 == "Orange")
{
    $total1 = $Orange;
}

$Lumia800="10";

if ($pref == "Lumia800")
{
    $total = $Lumia800 + $Orange;
}

echo $total;

    ?>

This example output is ’15’

The aim of this example is to eventually create a simple phone package system, with this set of code adding the price of the phone, the network costs, and other variables together for a final total of how much it would cost when the user submits it.

The problem I have is that I want to add each variable from the corresponding dropdown boxes (“Phones” and “Network” for example) against each other. Is my example going to be too over complicated for such a simple script? Is there a more refined method to get the results that I want?

Thanks,

JB.

Answer 1

It will work but might be complicated. I would suggest changing over to a switch statement instead.

$total = 0
switch ($pref) {
  case "Orange":
    $total +=  5;
    break;
  case "O2":
    $total +=  8;
    break;
}

Same switch structure would be for the $pref1 or network variable.